Child's view softens 'Fidel' biases

September 28, 2007|By Tasha Robinson, Special to the Tribune

It's all too easy to read 'Blame It On Fidel' as a simple morality tale, an allegory comparing conservatism to childishness, and political awakening to emotional maturity. That message may raise some hackles, but French writer-director Julie Gavras -- daughter of lauded filmmaker Costa-Gavras -- knows how to take the sting out of a lecture. Her first narrative feature (following a string of documentaries) approaches the message from a bittersweet, compelling angle by filtering it through a child's eyes and a child's understanding.

Newcomer Nina Kervel stars as Anna, the 9-year-old daughter of a wealthy Parisian couple whose comfortable life has made her complacent and condescending: Introduced at a wedding in 1970, she teaches the children's table "to cut fruit properly," primly informing her aunt, "they're not very gifted." That smugness dissipates when the family's Communist relatives encounter a crisis in Franco's Spain. Guilt-stricken, her Spanish father (Stefano Accorsi) and supportive French mother (Julie Depardieu, daughter of French actor Gerard) become political radicals, moving away from lucrative careers to support socialist causes and women's rights.

This introduces a series of intolerable disruptions into Anna's neatly ordered world, as the family moves from a luxurious home to a small apartment frequently filled with smoking, shaggy-bearded men mulling over solidarity and redistribution of wealth. Sullenly protesting this and other new experiences, Anna scolds her parents openly, suggesting that their politics are off base and not worth enduring discomfort, they should put themselves first, and just being polite to the poor should be enough.

There's a sharp satirical edge to the prospect of a pre-pubescent child wishing the world would return to the values of her younger years, but Kervel's palpable frustration removes any sense of comedy, and Gavras encourages viewers to take her intensity seriously without supporting her selfishness. Her sensitive framing of Anna's rage and confusion -- and Kervel's terrific, believable performance -- recalls the films of Gavras' countryman Jacques Doillon, whose "Ponette" and "Petits Freres" similarly deal vividly and intimately with children caught up in adult emotion and adult problems.

Most tellingly, Gavras doesn't idealize Anna's politically minded parents; they're trying to do the right thing, but they become angry, neglectful, argumentative and monomaniacal in the process, and there's no clear "right" side. Still, Gavras' ending makes it clear where her sympathies lie. In the process of building to that conclusion, she overplays her metaphor a bit, but still, political tracts rarely come this sweet and sympathetic.

'Blame It On Fidel'

**

Directed by Julie Gavras; screenplay by Julie Gavras, adapting a novel by Domitilla Calamai; photographed by Nathalie Durand; edited by Pauline Dairou; music by Armand Amar; production design by Laurent Deroo; produced by Sylvie Pialat. A Koch Lorber Films release; opens Friday at the Music Box Theatre. Running time: 1:39. In French with English subtitles.